Saturday, August 20, 2005

Giventhelatestrevelations concerning what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes, revelations which show that the police lied about every aspect of the matter, and that Sir Ian Blair himself lied and appeared to attempt to cover up the lying by preventing an inquiry, it goes without saying that:

Sir Ian Blair has to resign, or be fired. He either said things he knew to be untrue or passed on such lies by subordinates who had so little respect for him that they didn't care if he lied or not. In either case he has no place running a police department. The cover up of the lying just makes things worse.

All the officers involved have to be tried for manslaughter, including those who ordered the execution, and attention ought to be paid to whether Sir Ian Blair should be charged with obstruction of justice.

The 'shoot to kill' policy should be as dead as Jean Charles de Menezes.

All these things are obvious, but I think it is important to stifle the even more important danger that the British military is attempting to import the dirty war in Northern Ireland into London. From an article by Michael Smith (him again!):

"Press photographs of members of the armed response team taken in the immediate aftermath of the killing show at least one man carrying a special forces weapon that is not issued to SO19, the Metropolitan police firearms unit.

The man, wearing civilian clothes with a blue cap marked 'Police', was carrying a specially modified Heckler & Koch G3K rifle with a shortened barrel and a butt from a PSG-1 sniper rifle fitted to it — a combination used by the SAS.

Another man, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and trainers, was carrying a Heckler & Koch G36C. Although this weapon is used on occasion by SO19 it appears to be fitted with a target illuminator purchased as an 'urgent operational requirement' for UK special forces involved in the war on terror."

Although the official position is that the SAS was only involved in surveillance, and the London police did the shooting, it is impossible to believe anything they say anymore, and more and more evidence points to this being a full-fledged military operation. Smith goes on (my emphasis in bold):

"The use of multiple shots to the head is the modus operandi of the special forces, whether from the SAS, the SBS or the undercover intelligence operators used in the Stockwell operation. Over the past 30 years the SAS has developed a reputation for never allowing gunmen to remain alive, an attitude shown most graphically during the 1980 Iranian hostages siege and the Gibraltar IRA killings eight years later.

'It is vital to strike fear into the minds of the terrorists,' one former SAS officer said. 'In an ongoing situation such as we have now the fear must be directed to the fact that we are watching them and will eventually (get) them. They need to know that they cannot escape.

'We know they are happy to kill themselves but that doesn't mean they are happy to be killed by others. As long as they evade the police they will think they are in control but the minute they are intercepted they lose control.'"

Despite all the talk about the Israeli 'shoot to kill' policy, the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes appears to be an example of a long-standing British military policy. It was irrelevant to them whether he was a terrorist or not. They decided to pursue him, and literally grabbed him out of the hands of the London police, because they wanted to set an example. The complete ruthlessness with which they acted was meant to show any prospective terrorists that they would not live to be heroes. You simply can't have incompetent military murderers running around in a civilized country. Apart from dealing with this specific problem, the British people have a bigger job to do: keep Britain from becoming infected with the threat of military violence against its own people.